


How Long

by compo67



Series: Chicago Verse [69]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Birthday, Bottom Sam Winchester, Dean's Birthday, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Established Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester, Established Relationship, Fluff, Lazy Mornings, M/M, POV Dean Winchester, Post-Series, Top Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 22:25:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3225713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/compo67/pseuds/compo67
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Happy 55th birthday, Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Long

**Author's Note:**

> ellie goudling- "how long will i love you" while you read

Today, Dean is fifty-five years young.  
  
Sure, his knee hurts more than a little, but he’s still somewhat spry. These January mornings don't do his knee any favors. And, okay, when he gets up, there's a symphony of joints popping and bones creaking. If details are what anyone is after, there might also be more gray in his hair than he recalls seeing last year, but hey, at least the hair is still _there_. That’s more than any man—especially a hunter—can say at this age.  
  
Today, Dean is awake early. Surprisingly, he wakes up before Sam. There also happens to be a cat butt on Dean’s face. Cat doesn't take kindly at all to his movement. She glares, huffs, and moves away, settling near Sam's ass—the warmest part of him. Bitch, Dean thinks to himself as he stretches, that's his favorite spot too.  
  
He sits up in their bed.  
  
Fifty-five.  
  
He never pictured himself here.

What could he tell his twenty five year old self? What lies? What half truths? And if he could somehow stretch into the past—would that young man believe it if Dean held out his hands and asked him to count the visible veins?  
  
It's possible—he thinks to himself across time—to have what others have always had and taken for granted. He looks around the room. Socks are on the floor. The paint job they did last summer sucks because there was this bag of oranges and humidity makes Sam frisky. They're trying out a lighter shade of blue this year, but the old one still peaks out at corners. On the left, near the door, a new dresser sits, which was delivered two weeks ago from the lumberjack on the North Side. He had it as a personal project, so it was ready to go when Dean toured his shop. It's sturdy and solid and has sigils carved into the top.  
  
Two wallets rest on the new dresser, along with the accessories of life: belts, keys, receipts, a pocket sized book of Sudoku puzzles, Chapstick, and lotion.  
  
It's very possible.  
  
Thirty years ago, he was driving circles around Palo Alto, on the border of asking, not asking, seeing, not seeing, and always watching from afar. He did it because that's what had been taught to him. And now, at fifty-five, he's starting to unlearn a few things. Some of that unlearning happens here, right next to Sam, carding fingers through his hair to wake him up slowly.  
  
All of this is possible. He can own a vacuum cleaner, he can receive a Kitchen Aid mixer from Sam as a Christmas gift and bake a fuck ton of brownies, cakes, and yes, pies. It's a machine that might as well drain sugar into his veins. He can sleep with his favorite blade under his pillow and a constant supply of his favorite lube in the nightstand next to his side of the bed. He had have a side of the bed. He can share that bed, every night, with someone who will not only be there the next morning, but every morning after. Someone who chases trains because he left late since he was busy blow drying his hair. Someone who laughs and makes Dean laugh just because they're laughing. Someone who is absolutely forbidden from touching the Kitchen Aid mixer—ever. Someone who cleans out the litter box because it hurts Dean to do it, someone who isn't exactly friends with Cat, but is slowly getting there.  
  
Dean named her Cat. He wanted to keep it simple. Her ears flick as he reaches out to mess with her fur.

Someone who regularly wakes Dean up at five thirty in the morning for good morning blow jobs and a slow, heated fuck before work. Someone who rides Dean so he doesn’t hurt his knee and when they finish, cleans them both up even though that used to be Dean’s job. Someone who—even on the busiest days or longest nights—will find forty-five seconds to spare so he can heat up Dean’s bean bag and place it on his knee. Someone who makes sure Dean never takes more than two Aleve at a time.

Someone with a mouth Dean doesn’t allow to be unkissed for a day. That ain’t right.  
  
It's possible to sit here and close his eyes and think that it might be good to make a chocolate cake today.  
  
And what the hell, a pecan pie too.  
  
It's his god damn birthday, he nods; he can have anything he wants to stuff in his face. Including the Sasquatch next to him.  
  
Cat stirs, bristling, and decides that she is tired of being moved. She leaves the annoying humans behind and settles into the laundry hamper, getting fur in all of Sam's work shirts. Good girl.  
  
Dean settles back into bed and lays chest to back with Sam.  
  
This is possible.  
  
Through the terrible end and the blessed start again, it's possible.  
  
A groggy, half awake voice sounds out, a lower, more rumbling pitch than  forty years ago but all the same still. "Dean?"  
  
"Hmm."  
  
"...it's so early."  
  
"Eh."  
  
"Go back to sleep."  
  
"Maybe."  
  
Sam breathes in and out, deep and lazy. He twists in bed, lifting up the covers, settling so he faces Dean. His eyes are nothing but sleep, and his hair is a wild mess. Dimples are there.  
  
"Hey," Sam murmurs, resting an arm over Dean's waist. "Happy birthday."  
  
"That's it?" Dean rumbles, their noses touching. He doesn't mind Sam's morning breath. "No fireworks or a parade or confetti or sex?"  
  
"Not at this rate, you jerk." There's still a smile there; Sam is terrible at bluffing.  
  
It's possible to not have solid plans for today, to see what they feel like doing, and be happy even if it's nothing at all.  
  
Sam presses a kiss to Dean's forehead.  
  
He moves his hand up to the side of Dean's face, thumbing his cheek. It's possible to lean into this touch rather than pull away from it. And it's possible, twenty-five year old Dean, to have Sam.  
  
Year after year after year.  
  
It's all possible.  
  
"How long will I love you?" Sam breathes, his voice steady and even. "As long as stars are above you, and longer if I can. How long will I need you? As long as the seasons need to follow their plan."  
  
Sam almost never sings. He's not sure of himself this way. He can draft reports and argue other lawyers into the ground. He can track a nest of vampires for hundreds of miles without losing them. He can forgive and remind Dean that compassion is possible He can convince Dean that people are still good. This is possible.  
  
Happiness is an option.  
  
Take it, Dean tells himself, thirty years back.  
  
Take it and have this.  
  
"How long will I be with you? As long as the sea is bound to wash upon the sand."  
  
Be the luckiest man in the world every day.  
  
"How long will I want you? As long as you want me to, and longer by far. How long will I give to you? As long as I live through you. However long you say."  
  
Through snow and rain and stupidly hot and humid Chicago summers. Through picking Sam up at work during rush hour or driving through Wrigleyville when the Cubs are playing just because Sam wants to go to that Thai place.  
  
"How long will I love you?"  
  
Things will get twisted and wrong and it'll hurt so much.  
  
"As long as the stars are above you, and longer if I may."  
  
And for some time, no one will be themselves. But here they are. Circled back. It's not a motel bed. It's their bed. And Dean is okay spending all day in it.  
  
"How long will I love you?"  
  
Sam smiles.  
  
Dean answers back.  
  
"As long as stars are above me."  
  
Fifty-five feels good.

**Author's Note:**

> this was uploaded super fast on my lunch break. i did the rough draft before i left for work--on my phone--and then came back to edit on my tablet and add a bit more. overall, i'm pretty happy with how it turned out. :D been saving this song for a while. 
> 
> thanks for reading! i'm sure dean is over the moon with all the birthday wishes. XD


End file.
